Business as usual will no longer suffice…

A version of this post has been published on LinkedIn.

While carolers recently proclaimed “tis the season to be jolly,” twas also the time of year to be easily reminded of the excesses of capitalism, from Black Friday to its expansion in many cases to Black Friday Week (and longer) motivating purchase of things not needed, to the distaste for and dehumanization of the poor exhibited by A Christmas Carol’s Ebenezer Scrooge and It’s a Wonderful Life’s Mr. Potter (both with their many modern day counterparts).

But the holidays are not needed for such reminders, particularly these days, with reports of the unethical behavior of major tech companies continually in the news along with reports of the damage their products continue to inflict. And denials of climate change in the face of irrefutable evidence and predictions of likely doom; as Marc Benioff (CEO of Salesforce) tweeted in August:

Benioff’s highly visible support of a tax on large San Francisco companies to help the city address its major problem with homelessness was a recent bright spot in the world of tech and capitalism and apparently key to the proposition’s passage.

However, this is all about corporations giving money to others to help others address societal problems. Corporations also do this via various philanthropic programs, but as Marc Wexler (Co-Founder of Not for Sale) argues, the model of corporations doing whatever they need to to make money and then giving money to others to address societal (or environmental) problems is broken. Indeed, corporate behavior often perpetuates the problems corporate taxes and philanthropic contributions go towards fixing. Wexler calls this “soul crushing.”

Some have argued for the need for a different approach to capitalism. For example, Michael Porter and Mark Kramer have stated:

“Capitalism is an unparalleled vehicle for meeting human needs, improving efficiency, creating jobs, and building wealth. But a narrow conception of capitalism has prevented business from harnessing its full potential to meet society’s broader challenges. The opportunities have been there all along but have been overlooked. Businesses acting as businesses, not as charitable donors, are the most powerful force for addressing the pressing issues we face. The moment for a new conception of capitalism is now; society’s needs are large and growing, while customers, employees, and a new generation of young people are asking business to step up.”

The concept of “conscious capitalism” has received considerable attention. From the Conscious Capitalist Credo:

“Conscious Capitalism is a way of thinking about capitalism and business that better reflects where we are in the human journey, the state of our world today, and the innate potential of business to make a positive impact on the world. Conscious businesses are galvanized by higher purposes that serve, align, and integrate the interests of all their major stakeholders. Their higher state of consciousness makes visible to them the interdependencies that exist across all stakeholders, allowing them to discover and harvest synergies from situations that otherwise seem replete with tradeoffs. They have conscious leaders who are driven by service to the company’s purpose, all the people the business touches, and the planet we all share together.”

Sebastian Buck (Co-Founder of Enso) argues for a need to move from “extractive capitalism” to “generative capitalism.”

“Generative capitalism contributes new value to the world; extractive capitalism reallocates existing value.”

To date, Porter’s and Kramer’s concept of “shared value” — “creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges” — has probably received the most attention, perhaps in part because it involves, as stated earlier, “businesses acting as businesses.” Unlike corporate social responsibility or philanthropy, “it is not on the margin of what companies do but at the center.”

And, as Porter and Kramer stated, “customers, employees, and a new generation of young people are asking business to step up.” One sees evidence of that in, for example, Amazon employees using their shareholder power to demand corporate action on climate change and in employees elsewhere spearheading diversity initiatives.

Some businesses have responded, including Walmart (whose Chief Sustainability Officer proclaimed in 2017 that “business exists to serve society,” and the company has increasingly acted in accordance with that view) and other companies identified by Forbes as “using the profit motive to help the planet and tackle social problems.” 

“The profit motive” appears to be key, so when environmental or social problems can be talked about in terms of money….

Or to put it more simply:

“Businesses acting as businesses…”

Yet, businesses have not responded as much as some predicted. SO much more can and needs to be done.

As I’ve stated elsewhere, part of the problem is the difficulty corporations have understanding social and environmental issues adequately and working effectively with others already working on such issues. As I’ve also stated, designers schooled in effectively designing for social or environmental impact have skills that can help corporations address this difficulty. I’ve identified some of those skills; Mike Youngblood elaborates on how anthropological thinking — an essential component of good design — “can help make business greener”; and Jared Spool highlights another of the essential skills below:

But as I’ve argued in multiple talks (e.g., at the Interaction Design Education Summit in Lyon France last February) and as Marc Rettig argues in my conversation with him about what it takes for companies to move toward social and environmental responsibility, designers need to elevate their game. At the same time, companies have to elevate their understanding of design and of the role designers can play in business.

However, Calvin’s Hobbes so sadly concludes:

But we are at a point of crisis. Business as usual will no longer suffice…

Perhaps the final Calvin and Hobbes strip ever published offers a ray of hope:

Here’s to a happy new year!

Do I really need to write a book?

Last month, I was chatting with Peter Merholz at the Big Design Conference in Dallas. He was there promoting his new book, Org Design for Design Orgs: Building and Managing In-House Teams — an excellent book by the way, and we were talking about how interesting it is that it is still important to write a book to be sought out as a consultant; blog posts are not enough. “You’ve never written a book, have you?”, said Peter, “Why not?” (Interestingly, it was Peter who first asked me years ago why I hadn’t started my own user research firm.)

Should I have written a book by now? Probably, yes. (Should I have started my own user research firm years ago? Again, probably yes.) I certainly have a couple of books in me, but do I really want to urge them out? Is it really true that good blog posts cannot suffice?

Well, without answering those questions (at least for now), let me spend a bit of time proclaiming the merits of reading old blog posts — not just anyone’s, but mine! I’ve written lots about topics such as those Peter addresses in his new book, and though many of those posts have aged a number of years, their relevance remains surprisingly — perhaps disturbingly — high. And what makes my posts particularly valuable is that they present and contrast the experiences and perspectives of many; they are not solely about what I think and have experienced.

For example, consider the topic of design collaboration. Cross-functional collaboration is now highly touted as crucial to successful design, but I know lots of designers who still do their work largely independently. WTF? Some of my blog posts on the importance of collaboration and keys to its success include:

• “The three-legged stool of collaboration”
• Breaking silos
• “Check your disciplines at the door” when beneficial
• The need for good facilitation
• Soft skills
• Walls
• Effective collaboration and fun

Numerous posts address (additional) characteristics of a good research and design process, something with which many continue to struggle. They include:

• Are you trying to solve the right problem?
• On concept design, ethnography, MRDs, and product vision
• A(other) call to action regarding healthcare
• Utilizing patients in the experience design process
• Go ahead — ask people what they want
• Applying “design thinking” to, um, design
• Prototyping for tiny fingers

But what do you do when you can’t follow an ideal process? I had a conversation about just that about a month ago with a director at a company that strongly touts its ideal process, but can’t always engage in it. I pointed him to, Working “middle out,” an approach which ends up increasing the chances of following a more ideal process in the future.

Multiple obstacles to employing design in the most impactful way can surface. Some of the many posts about such obstacles include:

• Preconceived notions
• “Designing in hostile territory”
• “There is only so much air in the room”
• Making changes to a company’s culture
• What is holding User Experience back or propelling User Experience forward where you work?
• Roles and relationships
• Eliminating noise and confusion

Each post in the above list also addresses how to deal with such obstacles. Additional posts which do the same include:

• Framing change / Changing frames
• Secret agent (wo)man?
• Changing the course or pace of a large ship
• Partnering with power
• Calculating return on investment
• Perturbing the ecosystem via intensive, rapid, cross-disciplinary collaboration
• Convincing executives and other management personnel of the value of ethnography

The design and positioning of design organizations is still a hot topic, as suggested by the reaction to Peter’s book. Among the posts I’ve written on this topic:

• Where should “User Experience” be positioned in your company?
• Does it matter where User Experience is positioned in your corporate structure?
• On the importance of alignment, trust, loyalty, …
• Hail to the Chief!
• Getting the organizational relationships right
• Ownership of the user-customer experience
• The internal consultancy model for strategic UXD relevance
• Who should you hire?

And I’ve authored posts on so much more. Indeed, there is gold to be found in these many blogposts.

Design leadership is a hot topic these days, and many of these posts could form the foundation of a very good book on the topic. But, can’t the blog suffice? Do I really need to write a book?

Well, things would be better organized in a book, and I’d update and extend the posts’ content, and I’d fill in some gaps, and…

OK, maybe I should write a book. But while I do that or consider doing that, look through the lists of posts I've presented above for those that might be of help to you now. Use the tags for help accessing others. As I mentioned earlier, even the older posts continue to be of relevance.

On what holds UX back or propels UX forward in the workplace

A version of this post has been published as a blog post for interactions magazine.

Among the teaching that I've done: UX management courses and workshops via the University of California Extension, during conferences, and in companies. And a topic I have always addressed therein: what holds UX back and propels UX forward in the workplace -- or to put it another way, what increases and what decreases the influence of UX on the business.

Last month, Dan Rosenberg authored an interactions blog post in which he states that a root cause for a lack of UX leadership in business decisions relates to "how the typical types and methods of user research data we collect and communicate today have failed our most important leadership customer/partner/funding source, the corporate CEO." (Dan will be elaborating on this in the March+April 2013 issue of interactions.) In my courses and workshops, we identify all sorts of reasons UX isn't as influential as it might or should be, and we often do so in part via use of a simple "speedboat exercise" as I described in a UX Magazine article entitled, "What is Holding User Experience Back Where You Work?". (A variation of the exercise can be used to help identify what has propelled UX forward in workplaces.)

I've also often addressed this topic in my blog, sometimes referring to discussions that occurred during my management courses or during conference sessions. For example, course guest speaker John Armitage made the following point:

"There is only so much air in the room -- only so much budget, head-count, attention, and future potential in an organization. And people within the organization are struggling to acquire it -- struggling for power, influence, promotion, etc. whether because of ego or as a competitive move against threats of rivals. People will turn a blind eye to good ideas if they don't support their career and personal objectives. Hence, if user experience is perceived as a threat, and if they think they can stop it, they will, even if it hurts the company."

Guest speaker Jim Nieters addressed the role that the positioning of UX personnel in an organization plays:

"You want to work for an executive who buys-in to what you do. If that executive is in marketing, then that is where you should be positioned. If that executive is in engineering, then that is where you should be positioned. Specifically where you sit matters less than finding the executive who supports you the most. If the executive you work for has reservations about what you do and wants proof of its value, that is a sign that you might be working for the wrong person."

Organizational positioning and the type of user research conducted were two of the factors debated by a stellar panel of UX executives and managers I assembled for a CHI conference session entitled, "Moving User Experience into a Position of Corporate Influence: Whose Advice Really Works?".

We also addressed this topic in interactions articles published when I was the magazine's Co-Editor-in-Chief. For example, in "The Business of Customer Experience," Secil Watson described work done by her teams at Wells Fargo Bank:

"We championed customer experience broadly. We knew that product managers, engineers, and servicing staff were equally important partners in the success of each of our customer-experience efforts. Instead of owning and controlling the goal of creating positive customer experience, we shared our vision and our methods across the group. This was a grassroots effort that took a long time. We didn't do formal training across the group, nor did we mandate a new process. Instead, we created converts in every project we touched using our UCD methods. Having a flexible set of well-designed, easy-to-use UCD tools ... made the experience teams more credible and put us in the position of guiding the process of concept definition and design for our business partners."

Forming the centerpiece of their UCD toolkit: an extensive user research-based user task model. The influence of the use of these tools extended to project identification, project prioritization, business case development, and more.

I encourage managers to employ the speedboat exercise to prompt diagnosis and discussion in their own place of work. Also, peruse my blog posts and past issues of interactions for more on factors that impact the influence of UX. And give particular thought to the role user research might play; along these lines, look forward, with me, to what further Dan Rosenberg has to say in the March+April issue of interactions.

Community manager -- hmm, that role sounds kinda familiar...

Having seen more and more references to a role called "community manager" in recent months, I decided to find out what people in that role do. In doing so, I found out that I had been a community manager -- a very good community manager -- in different contexts for years.

Wikipedia refers to this role as the "online community manager," and the role is sometimes confused with that of the social media manager. Some have tried to clarify how these two roles are distinct, but UserVoice's Evan Hamilton is one of probably many community managers who find themselves performing the social media manager role in addition to others.

Indeed, community managers often play a wide variety of roles, as revealed at a recent community manager breakfast hosted by Evan. Roles played by one or more of the community managers in attendance include:

• helping customers (i.e., the community members) have a great experience;
• trying to get customers to stay customers;
• finding product bugs;
• giving feedback to product managers;
• being a gatekeeper for all customer communications;
• figuring out the right kind of metrics to use to measure their own effectiveness;
• managing social media activity;
• driving the brand voice;
• advocating for users;
• organizing events/contests/...

Attendees reported that they work in businesses of a wide variety of sizes and find themselves positioned organizationally in a wide variety of departments, including marketing, engineering, product, customer service, and sales support. Views varied as to which department community managers should report to, but all thought it best that the role evolve to be a "horizontal, strategic role" touching all parts of the company and that it should eventually include a C-level role known, perhaps, as the Chief Happiness Officer.

All these topics and many more were discussed by ~200 community managers nearly a week ago at the Community Leadership Summit (CLS) West 2012 held at eBay Town Hall in San Jose, CA. CLS West was an unconference with a packed agenda of 40 different sessions, and all attendees were enthusiastic participants.

Why so much attention to the role of community manager? A John Hagel and John Seely Brown blog posting from earlier this week provides one answer:

"Building an effective virtual community is no simple task. Most importantly, it requires a deep understanding of the unmet needs of potential community members rather than simply approaching it as a marketing opportunity for the company. It is no wonder that so many have tried to create these communities and yet so few have succeeded."

However, what is most interesting to me about all this is the similarity of some of the community manager roles and challenges and aspirations to some of the roles and challenges and aspirations of user/customer experience personnel: advocating for users; understanding their unmet needs; helping customers have a great experience; providing input to product managers; figuring out the best location in the organizational structure; evolving into strategic roles; the Chief Experience or Customer Officer; ...

Also of interest to me is how many of these roles and challenges and aspirations are among those which I dealt with in my past roles as a community manager (though I never had that specific title). Having had extensive experience with the world's first online community -- PLATO -- while in graduate school, I developed and oversaw the use of social media tools modeled on PLATO's tools to employees working at Pacific Bell, then became much more of a community manager during the founding and early years of BayCHI. After years of serving the BayCHI community, I became a manager of an international community of community managers in the role of SIGCHI's Local Chapters Chair. In this role, I provided support to (potential) local community leaders in multiple forms, including workshops and articles, some of which remain of relevance to community managers of today. Two examples:

• The Social Design of a Local SIG: this discussion of the key elements of the design of cutting-edge virtual communities is as fitting today as it was in 1997;
• Challenges Facing CHI Local SIGs: (potential) community managers of today can benefit from being aware of these lists of challenges identified by a large international group of CHI local chapter leaders in 1998.

As suggested earlier, user/customer experience personnel also have (had) experiences that should be of interest to community managers. I'd like to someday see a large-scale meeting (of the minds) of UX/CX personnel and community managers to the probable benefit of both communities.

___

Note that I've played the role of community manager in another context as well (Co-Editor-in-Chief of interactions magazine), and it is possible that I will be playing the role again in yet another context in the future. Will the label of "community manager" finally be appropriate for me then? We shall see.

Impact of the role of the Chief Customer Officer

Back in May of 2005, I wrote about the role of the Chief Experience Officer, beginning with Challis Hodge's 2001 description of the role (as first held by Marc Rettig) and culminating in Jeffrey Rapport's 2005 advocation of the creation of the role in modern companies. In mid-2007, I updated the story, describing additional advocations of the creation of the role, a conference panel discussion I led of the pros and cons of the role, and the 2007 highly-publicized hiring of a Chief Experience Officer by Cleveland Clinic.

Forrester Research's initial advocation of the creation of the role in 2006 referred to it as a CC/EO -- a Chief Customer/Experience Officer. Subsequently, the word "Experience" in the title lost favor, and creation of the role of the Chief Customer Officer has taken off. There is even a (somewhat dated) book available about the role and a member-led advisory network of CCO peers.

Who is filling these roles? According to Forrester's Paul Hagan:

"The majority are internal hires who have a significant history at their companies: median time at their firms among those we studied is nearly eight years. A third of the CCOs previously held division president or general manager roles, and almost as many worked in a marketing and/or sales position. On the flip side, about one-fourth of these CCOs formerly held operations positions."

As noted by Samantha Starmer in UX Magazine, UX people are not the ones getting these newly created C-level positions. Plus, all sorts of departments are expected to be scrambling to play a major role in customer experience (CX) moving forward. This has prompted Samantha to warn:

"Given the current power of CX at the C-level, UX practitioners must step up our game, otherwise we will lose progress we have made to be more deeply involved in strategy beyond just performing usability services. We need to act now to be part of the broader CX solution. If we don't proactively collaborate across divisions and organizational structures, we will be stuck playing in the corner by ourselves. If we don't figure out how to manage partnerships with other departments in a collaborative, creative, customer focused way, the discipline of UX as we know it is at risk. CX management will take over."

In her article, Samantha emphasizes the need for UX to partner with marketing, an entity with which UX has had a strained history. Such partnerships have the potential to work wonderfully well, as suggested by the successful merger of user experience research and market research to form a Customer Insights organization a few years ago at Yahoo! (see "User (experience) research, design research, usability research, market research, ..." and "Why Designers Sometimes Make Me Cringe").

Partnership with organizations other than marketing is also important. Successful examples, led by UX, include those described by Secil Watson in "The Business of Customer Experience: Lessons Learned at Wells Fargo" and me (and others) in "Improving the Design of Business and Interactive System Concepts in a Digital Business Consultancy" and "Perturbing the ecosystem via intensive, rapid, cross-disciplinary collaboration."

How do you partner successfully? Genuine collaboration is a key, and the keys to collaboration are many, as I've addressed in past blog entries. See, for example:

• "'Check your disciplines at the door' when beneficial" (also in UX Magazine);
• "Soft skills" & "The need for good facilitation";
• "Breaking silos" & "What to do about those organizational obstacles";
• "Work space" & "Walls";
• "'The three-legged stool of collaboration'";
• "Effective collaboration and fun";
• & "Collaboration sessions."

Learning about other organizations' needs, goals, ways of working, etc. is also key. Take a look at what Misha Vaughn did to enable UX to impact and be appreciated by Oracle's sales force.

All of this and more -- e.g., getting UX moved from a cost center to an investment center (Brandon Schauer, MX 2011) -- may be essential to ensuring UX plays a vital role in the ballooning world of CX and CX management and to getting UX management personnel recognized as among the stronger candidates to fill the CCO role.

---
For more, see "Audio and slides for 'Moving UX into a position of corporate influence: Whose advice really works?'", "Ownership of the user-customer experience," and "Where should 'User Experience' be positioned in your company?".

Organizational and market maturity

Jon Kolko and I have been discussing whether the pace of corporate adoption and acceptance of comprehensive and strategic designer participation in business has been increasing. Look for a portion of that discussion in a piece we'll be calling something like "On designers as catalytic agents..." to appear in interactions cafe, our conclusion to the January+February 2010 issue of interactions magazine.

While we were having that discussion, Charles Kreitzberg kicked off a short discussion in IxDA's discussion list on what you need to say to a CEO to convince him or her of the need for "user experience design" in a company. As if all it takes is the right collection of words...

A response to Charles suggested that the maturity of the market the company is in is likely to impact the effectiveness of such a collection of words. And though Jon and I were talking about designer participation in a broader sense -- i.e., beyond user experience design, we discussed the concept of market maturity as well as corporate maturity, both of which have been addressed in numerous discussions over the years and for which numerous scales have been delineated. Since many may not be familiar with those scales, I thought I'd point to a few here.

Actually, I've pointed to a couple already in this blog. In "Developing user-centered tools for strategic business planning," I pointed to Jess McMullin's 2005 "design maturity continuum." Jess updated it a tad in December of 2008 and published the image of this version that appears nearby (click to enlarge). In his December 2008 post, Jess points out that his design maturity continuum is actually additive -- each higher level represents the addition of greater responsibility and scope for design.

Most other corporate scales I've seen are not additive but instead describe different stages organizations (or parts thereof) pass through. The first scales of this nature that I ever saw came from IBM Consulting in the early- to mid-90s and were used to rate the "usability management maturity" of their clients. Two of IBM's several scales, which appeared in little blue books they'd give to their clients, appear below:

HCI Resources

1. Little or no investment in qualified people, prototype/simulation tools, equipment, and/or usability evaluation facilities.
2. Some qualified people are available. There is limited availability of tools and equipment. A usability evaluation facility is available.
3. Sufficient investment made in qualified people/tools. Budget for user involvement exists.
4. Resources are applied effectively at proper stages and levels of the development process.
5. HCI resources are fundamental to the development process and considered essential in planning product costs.

Integrated Design

1. Various aspects of the design (panels, helps, pubs, installation, etc.) are designed separately or added late in the cycle.
2. The need for interdisciplinary design teams is recognized, but efforts are uncoordinated.
3. Plans for integrated design exist and are executed on a selective basis.
4. Integrated design teams are normally established. Teams are effective in improving overall usability.
5. All aspects of design evolve equally and in parallel. Designs provide users with solutions to needs.

In a 1994 book chapter, Kate Ehrlich and Janice Rohn delineated four stages of organizational acceptance of user-centered design. They are described in the table below (click to enlarge) which I took from Timo Jokela's 2001 dissertation.


Variations and extensions of this have appeared in a couple of international "standards," including the 1998 "ISO/DIS 13407 Human Centred Design for Interactive Systems":

0. Need unrecognized
1. Need recognized
2. Considered & encouraged
3. Implemented
4. Integrated
5. Institutionalized

Jakob Nielsen's 2006 version of such a scale -- which I've discussed in two earlier blog entries, including "Changing the pace or course of a large ship" -- combines elements found in all the above scales:

Stage 1: Hostility toward usability
Stage 2: Developer-centered usability
Stage 3: Skunkworks usability
Stage 4: Dedicated usability budget
Stage 5: Managed usability
Stage 6: Systematic usability process
Stage 7: Integrated user-centered design
Stage 8: User-driven corporation

(See "Corporate Usability Maturity: Stages 1-4 and Stages 5-8.")

Other such scales -- older and newer -- exist, but they look a lot alike though they tend to not be accompanied by references to any of the others. One of the more recent examples of these is Forrester's five levels of customer experience maturity, shown nearby via an image from a Bruce Temkin July 2009 blog posting.

Have you found any of these types of scales to be of help to you in places at which you have worked? Have you observed any corporate progressions not addressed in the scales described here that you think should be captured in a scale? (I can think of a couple.)

As for market maturity, the example referenced in the IxDA list discussion should suffice -- the four stages delineated by Jared Spool earlier this year (see "Deriving Design Strategy from Market Maturity: Part 1 and Part 2"):

1. The Technology is Worth the Pain (such as "when a new product category emerges," there are "no competitors or the users have no choice")
2. Building Out the Features (which usually happens "once a competitor joins you in a category" in order to catch up)
3. Focus on the Experience (when "customers stop focusing on new features and start asking for simplicity")
4. Supporting a Commodity (when "the things we're designing are embedded into bigger experiences")

Do such stages of market maturity trump the delineated stages of organizational maturity? Not at all, but they intersect. Consider both when trying to figure out what needs to be done for designers to be more effective and/or to expand their role in a company.

On innovation, appropriateness, intervention design, logic, research, the experience ecosystem, marketing, sustainability, wicked problems, and more

Jon Kolko and I -- Co-Editors-in-Chief of interactions magazine -- end each issue of the magazine with a "cafe" conversation on topics of relevance to the magazine's content. Jon always kicks off these conversations in a provocative but insightful way.

Here are the openings of, and pointers to, our first five "interactions cafe"s:

On Innovation, Appropriateness, Intervention Design, ... (January+February 2008)

Jon: I’m concerned with the overabundance of the word “innovation” in our professional discipline. At CONNECTING ‘07, the theme was neither subtle nor convincing: nearly every speaker talked about innovation (some better than others), yet no one over the course of four days managed to define the term. Apparently, if a business isn’t focused entirely on innovation right now, their business is completely ruined and they won’t be around in a hundred years.

But I’ve recently done a mental inventory of the products, software and services that I use and that I cherish. The items I hold dear to my heart are either one-offs (craft oriented and thus not in the realm of the innovation discussion) or refined and subtle: they are appropriate more than they are innovative. As we see a trend in society towards “slow” design [clearly juxtaposed with fast food culture], the bloat of features and functionality that seem to go hand in hand with being new and different seem dramatically misplaced.

On top of this, the majority of the companies that are clamoring for increased innovation haven’t proven that they can solve the older problem of quality: I don’t need more ‘new’ and ‘innovative’ features in Windows; I just need the bloody thing to work without crashing.

You do a lot of coaching and teaching companies to be more innovative. Why don’t you get them to be more appropriate, or refined, or polished, instead?

Richard: Actually, my coaching and teaching focus on moving “user experience” into a position of greater corporate attention and influence — on helping to enable companies to do the kinds of things Secil Watson describes in her article in our first issue of interactions. Roger Martin referred to this as “intervention design” in his conference plenary on “Design Thinking: The Next Competitive Advantage,” and I’m sure we’ll offer (more) articles on this in future issues.

Sometimes such interventions mean helping companies organize and do things in such a way that more appropriate, refined, or polished user experiences will result. But they do sometimes mean helping companies do things so that they can be more innovative. However, innovation can be an important part of making user experiences more appropriate, refined, or polished. I think Hugh Dubberly’s model of innovation in our first issue captures that.

Hugh’s model also addresses the insight required of all of this, stating that “immersion within the context is almost always essential” to achieve such insight. I often coach and advise companies on how to achieve such immersion effectively, and the article by Stefana Broadbent and Valerie Bauwens contributes guidance as well. That article also reveals ethnographic research findings that advise against certain types of innovation since they are likely to yield user experiences that are inappropriate.

Clearly, ethnographic research...

(continue reading "On Innovation, Appropriateness, Intervention Design, ...")

On Logic, Research, Design Synthesis, ... (March+April 2008)

Jon: A core theme of this issue of interactions has been the relationship between Interaction Design and education: how to teach it, how to learn it, and how to live it. As a Designer, I’m obviously biased towards Design Education, as I see Design as a core tenant of life (consider it akin to reading and writing: design has often been characterized as “dreaming” or “problem solving”, both of which I consider underpinnings of human life). At the same time, I see the value in logic and pragmatism, and I’m often challenged professionally to “prove it” or “back it up with a sound, logical argument”. Do you think future generations of professionals in the interaction world will have to walk the line between Art (emotion) and Science (logic), or will Design with a capital D finally have its time to shine?

Richard: Can design truly shine without addressing both emotion and logic? Was a need to walk the line between art and science responsible for all the messes described in the first section of this issue (entitled "The Mess We've Gotten Ourselves Into"), or is the culprit better described as an improper balance?

Roger Martin, whom we referenced in our first “interactions cafe” discussion, has written about how the predominant thinking in business — analytical thinking — is hostile to design, and how that needs to change. But he doesn’t argue that analytical thinking has no place.

Perhaps you can’t “prove it.” Perhaps you shouldn’t be expected to “prove it.” But is it wrong to expect you to develop and use and provide rationale that can be subjected to some form of critique throughout and after the design process?

Is Tracy Fullerton wrong in teaching and emphasizing the importance of playtesting in her Interactive Entertainment program at the USC School of Cinematic Arts? Was Mark Baskinger wrong to observe the elderly and kids in his inclusive design projects? Doesn’t such research contribute to a kind of “logical argument” that is essential?

Jon: I wonder if the word “rationale” should even be part of the designer’s language. ...

(continue reading "On Logic, Research, Design Synthesis, ...")

On the Experience Ecosystem, Drama, Choreography, ... (May+June 2008)

Jon: This issue clearly demonstrates a shift in thinking for practicing designers. Creators of physical, digital, and systematic products are moving away from the development of single, static things and are now considering the larger ecosystem of the experience in which these things are used. This experience lifecycle has even touched on children’s toys, as described by Allison Druin; it is no longer enough to offer products with a narrow focus. Instead, practitioners must “design” the physical artifact, the digital artifact, the system of integration, the unboxing experience and must even consider the urban fabric and culture in which the design is used.

It seems like few, if any, large corporations are organized in a way that supports this tremendous undertaking; the actual experience offering from these corporations is so watered down by the time it makes it to market that all indications of cohesion are lost.

Richard: Years ago I had the good fortune of working at Studio Archetype and Viant, where the focus was on helping clients figure out what to do as much as designing how to do something. Indeed, the Studio’s founder, Clement Mok, wrote a book entitled "Designing Business" back then, and Viant’s primary focus was on developing digital business strategy.

So, the approach to user research that I developed for both companies somewhat naturally looked at the larger ecosystem of the user experience, since that increased our contribution to figuring out what a business should do and facilitated designers’ contribution to the same.

Companies that involve user experience research and design in their business in such ways have a better chance of effectively considering and addressing that bigger picture. Secil Watson wrote of taking such an approach at Wells Fargo in our January+February 2008 issue. But it is hard to pull that off.

You attended Interaction 08 in...

(continue reading "On the Experience Ecosystem, Drama, Choreography, ...")

On Marketing, Sustainability, Pessimism, ... (July+August 2008)

Jon: I’m tired of advertising, and to be completely frank, I’m tired of marketing. The entire infrastructure for corporate marketing has arisen from a desire to convince the public that they need more, faster, better, now. We keep talking about sustainability, but we - and I include myself in this, as I work at a consultancy that makes *things* - keep producing more stuff, and keep thinking about ways to sell versions two and three and four of the stuff to people that don’t really need it in the first place.

What are we doing?

Richard: Change of such great magnitude doesn’t happen overnight. Some of the marketing you are tired of — that which describes what companies are doing to address sustainability — might suggest otherwise, but…

Of course, making “things” won’t go away, but the nature of those things can promote sustainability, as reflected in our cover story. And the way the consultancy you work at responds to clients who want you to make things for them can increase sustainability, as reflected in the Designers Accord described in our May+June issue; indeed, I think you can be proud that that accord was born where you work — frog design.

The Designers Accord is a very important effort, and I...

(continue reading "On Marketing, Sustainability, Pessimism, ...")

On Addressing Wicked Problems... (September+October 2008)

Jon: A lot of the discourse that surrounds interaction design speaks to the large, cultural change it can afford. When I used to teach, my students would become enamored with the possibilities of design, and would make grandiose, and unintentionally trivializing statements like "World hunger? It's just a design problem; we could solve it, if only we had the right model..." This issue of interactions presents a number of these types of problems: homelessness, sustainability, and memory impairment. Do you feel that we actually can solve these wicked, cultural problems through design?

Richard: Design can play an important role. As we suggest in our introduction to this issue design is changing in ways that should increase the role it can play. And increased adoption of "design thinking" by others -- as we've referenced in previous interactions cafes -- will help as well.

But let's take care to not treat design as if it were a religion or a savior. Agile development methodologies, with more than a few fanatical followers, are, in some cases, justifiably decried as little more than an excuse to not document code. The OLPC hasn't had, and is unlikely to have, much of an impact on children's education in developing nations.

Jon: The two examples you give share an interesting commonality. ...

(continue reading "On Addressing Wicked Problems...")

Coming in the November+December 2008 issue: On Mobile Communication, Cultural Norms, ...

Eliminating noise and confusion

With lots to do -- often much too much to do and not always what would be most beneficial for them to do (as referenced in prior blog entries, including "Realities, dilemmas, framings, ..."), user experience personnel aren't always able to do their best work, which can make them and those with or for whom they are doing the work less than fully satisfied. Past blog entries have referred to some of the ways of dealing with this; recent blog entry suggestions include saying "no," improving soft skills, and offloading certain types or parts of the work to others.

But there are additional possibilities.

One of them -- which can come in all sorts of variations -- was described by Craig Peters during the User Experience Managers and Executives Speak course I offered this past spring. Craig founded and oversees the work at Awasu Design and was co-founder of Bolt | Peters.

Craig has discovered that even some of the best user experience organizations and personnel, and the organizations and personnel with or for whom they work, are continually experiencing a considerable amount of noise and confusion, which gets in the way of doing the best or most appropriate work.

User experience personnel have long expressed frustration with others' lack of understanding of and appreciation for them and their work, (potential) users, and/or the impact user experience can have on business success. This has prompted many to develop materials to be used as part of ongoing "evangelizing" efforts.

However, such efforts, while important, are usually not all that is needed. Noise and confusion often persist, in part because there are additional sources of noise and confusion, many of which are experienced by user experience personnel themselves.

Among these additional sources of noise and confusion:

• an inadequate understanding of the organizations for or with which you do your work;
• an inadequate understanding of the organization you are in;
• an inadequate understanding of the processes used by the organizations for or with which you do your work;
• lack of certainty regarding who is responsible for what;
• and lack of certainty regarding how to negotiate with and explain the work you'll be doing to those for or with whom you'll be working.

As explained by Craig, such noise and confusion leads to all sorts of problems, including:

• others' inconsistent experiences of user experience personnel and their work from project to project;
• work activity selections that are not the best for the situation;
• things falling through the cracks;
• scheduling and timing difficulties;
• unwanted creeping project scope;
• management needing to step in much too frequently to solve problems;
• designs that are not as good as they could be;
• and missed opportunities to do work that is particularly needed or particularly strategic.

All of these kinds of problems hinder critical working relationships and leave personnel feeling overwhelmed and unhappy.

Craig described the process followed to discover the nature and characteristics of such problems and to design their solutions in work done for Wells Fargo. And he described the nature of part of the solution developed for and with Wells Fargo personnel. At Wells Fargo, the core of the solution was a Customer Experience Lead program, complete with a guide and a collection of materials and tools to be used by whomever plays the role of Customer Experience Lead on a project. (Those materials and tools included organizational explanations, forms for a customer experience brief, numerous checklists, and numerous one-page explanations of customer experience work activities.) Additionally, a new stage was added to their user-centered design process, training was developed for Customer Experience Leads, and various personnel were designated owners of different components of the program, providing a mechanism for making improvements to the program going forward.

The program developed for Wells Fargo is receiving rave reviews. Wells Fargo's Secil Watson, SVP of Channel Strategy -- the organization which includes the Customer Experience group -- even recommended Craig and this type of work during her presentation at MX (Managing Experience) 2008.

What I think makes this kind of effort especially valuable is that it puts organizations in a much stronger position to address many other critical issues (see past blog entries for discussions of many examples of these) that the noise and confusion can cloud. And if done correctly, the process for identifying the nature and characteristics of such noise and confusion will begin to reveal the nature and characteristics of other critical issues, providing guidance for subsequent improvement efforts.

It is important to emphasize that the program developed for Wells Fargo will not be the solution for noise and confusion experienced elsewhere, whether involving an "internal" organization (akin to the organization in Wells Fargo) or an "external" agency. Certain components might be similar, but the program developed for Wells Fargo is working because it fits the way things work at Wells Fargo and addresses their specific needs. Things work very differently in different companies.

It is also important to emphasize the high quality of the customer experience (and related) personnel at Wells Fargo. For example, I've referenced and quoted Secil Watson repeatedly in this blog (see, for example, "Breaking silos"), and I invited her to write an article for my first issue of interactions magazine as Co-Editor-in-Chief (which she did -- see "The Business of Customer Experience: Lessons Learned at Wells Fargo"), because I think so highly of her approach. I've also referenced the excellent work done by other Wells Fargo management personnel in this blog (see, for example, "Developing user-centered tools for strategic business planning"). Highly capable and successful personnel are not immune from such noise and confusion or from the benefits of outside assistance regarding it or other important issues. And they recognize that.

Craig and I are now teaming up to offer such assistance. Give us a holler to learn more.

Roles and Relationships

In two of my most recent three blog entries, I argued that too much of the work done by user experience professionals ends up not being beneficial.

A good example of this was described last evening by TiVo's Margret Schmidt (VP of User Experience Design and Research, and pictured nearby) and Elissa Lee (Sr. Director of Research) during a presentation entitled, "Bringing the Spirit of the DVR to the Web: TiVo Launches a New tivo.com."

The abstract of that presentation:

"TiVo is often noted for its friendly TV experience. We recently launched a new version of tivo.com designed to bring that same simplicity and ease-of-use to our web presence. It took a close partnership between User Experience and Marketing, the right balance of internal and external design leadership, and a strong internal research team dedicated to continuous feedback in order to make the design a success. We'll discuss how we structured the project, the research techniques we used, and what we learned along the way."

The third sentence of that abstract -- italics added by me -- stands in sharp contrast to what happened during a redesign of tivo.com a year earlier -- a redesign that, even though built, was never launched. The slide to the left outlines some of the key reasons for that failure. In short, roles and relationships were all messed up, and TiVo executives, helped by results of post-design usability testing conducted by the internal research team, recognized that a launch of the redesigned site would be highly inadvisable.

Frustrated by this and related experiences, Margret went to Marketing and asked what she could do so that this kind of thing would not happen again. To her delight (and probable surprise), she was asked to lead the next attempt. More of what was new about the next attempt is outlined in the slide to the right. The timelines were still unrealistic, resulting in long hours locked away in a "war room" to get things done -- see those same two recent blog entries of mine about how user experience professionals are too often overwhelmed with work. And the nature of the involvement of and relationship with the external agency was still not ideal -- a problem so many companies experience. But this time, everyone bought into the vision and the approach, and the redesign was not a waste of time and effort.

One can argue that the failure of last year was necessary to enable the success of this year. Indeed, failures of such magnitude often create golden opportunities to make needed adjustments to roles and responsibilities (and process and ...). However, though often hard if not impossible (see, for example, "'There is only so much air in the room'"), do whatever you can to get the roles and relationships right from the start.